Saturday, June 17, 2006

Steve may smile or may hate it. It was Bill and its troop who brought Apple down in 80’s. MSFT shunned them out of mass limelight and deprived of wealth and fortunes.

This time with next showdown to happen in industry now, Steve Jobs is pretty confident that he is going to succeed against Bill and his troops (not MSFT). His execution is coming out perfected. Situation is that there are adversaries and then Bill is there to fight who could never be brought down by anyone. Its Steve time that he'll lead and Bill will follow, but suddenly Bill left, so what now?

Apple is safer to execute its strategy and take command. I am sure they'll do it.

But there are different questions which arise now and bother technology visionaries and leaders more than common people and analysts:

Apple will be leader but they didn’t have a competitor who could bring them down. Steve with his success will always be bothered now when he'll ask himself “What would have happened if Bill was still there? I wanted to have that showdown to let people know that not only I have awesome vision but also excellent business execution. Bill left. People and I think that would Apple achieved same success if he would be leading his troops from Washington?"

"You can try to achieve success but success will come on its own terms"

Microsoft, a phenomenon, albeit more hated for its monopolistic behaviour but also loved for delivering its stockholders and employees immense wealth until tech boom meltdown.

Microsoft was young versatile and aggressive company in 80's and 90' s with mentality of winning. The passion remains there but drivers are tired of running on same path again and again. So to make it interesting do some crashes and stunts to get people notice that they are vulnerable or not see next highway exit and get lost to figure how to reach it back. Aging and overweight shows there.

Its IBM of 80's where it was challenged by new players. New microsoft execs have fantastic credential but everyone in 80's IBM had same for their times but they lost. Wasn't OS/2 superb but didn't succeed. It was there in every IBM customer's shop and was sold to them but no new customer came and that led to its demise.

As GOOGLE says " We don't look at past, its future we work towards" and they try to figure future by themselves, which Microsoft and Intel did in 80's and 90's and ultimately led to IBM meltdown.

Compare any great company with visionary left, what happened to it. Company closed down or was saved and is only delivering on quarterly and yearly results.

Microsoft will accelerate the missteps for a while as mass exodus from campus increases and then company misses new trends. Analysts will come calling to disintegrate the company ( same as IBM or other big companies). Board will then bring an executive who will be outsider and change the mindset and ask Microsoft to emphasize on its strength and milk its monopoly of Windows.

MICROSOFT WILL BE ONE OF MAJOR HEAVYWEIGHT IN TECH INDUSTRY BUT WONT BE LEADER ANYMORE. ITS WEIGHT TO MOVE TECH IN A PARTICULAR DIRECTION WILL BE IMPORTANT BUT SETTING DIRECTION (RESPONSIBILITY) NOW WILL GO TO SOMEONE ELSE. ( WAIT 5YEARS to unfold as mentioned in this article).